Chapter 261 Humanity Sophon Project Completion

Crisis Era, Year 236.

That year, humanity produced the first piece of Strong Interaction Material (SIM), and it was expected that large-scale production could be achieved within two years.

If the key parts of human warships were armored with SIM, it would be the best defensive measure—even The Waterdrop would not dare to collide with it.

Even small warships on special missions could have their entire hulls armored with SIM material. These warships only needed to add a layer of disguise on the outermost surface to further confuse the Trisolarans and could also be equipped with Sophon shielding fields, making the Sophons unable to probe them. This was like a hidden sword in the deep sea, becoming an important force for humanity's counterattack.

Producing Strong Interaction Material was actually quite easy; the key was the force field generator that maintained that special force field, which involved the fifth force of the universe.

This force usually curled up in High-Dimensional Space; just by tweaking the dimensional string of that High-Dimensional Space, this force could be directed and released into Three-dimensional Space.

By adjusting this force field, the electromagnetic interaction of a material could be weakened while the Strong Interaction Force was enhanced and expanded beyond the range of the nucleus, allowing the material's nuclei to be connected through the Strong Interaction Force. This was akin to a substance that was a type of matter between a neutron-degenerate state and an electron-degenerate state.

Normally, degenerate states include electron-degenerate and neutron-degenerate states. The electron-degenerate state can be understood as the outer shells of atoms being crushed, with electrons compressed to extremely low orbits, yet still not touching the nucleus, like the material of white dwarfs. The neutron-degenerate state is when electrons are compressed into the nucleus, combine with protons to form neutrons, such as the material of neutron stars.

It's worth noting that on the original timeline, the Trisolarans gave humanity gravitation wave broadcasting technology, the principle of which was to use degenerate state matter to create highly dense long strings that vibrated, broadcasting messages to the stars.

The diameter of these super-dense degenerate strings was only a few nanometers, but the entire gravitation wave broadcast was massive, with most of the huge antenna volume used to support and encase this super-dense string material.

And the degenerate state material that formed the vibrating strings would decay in a normal environment, with a half-life of around fifty years. Once the half-life passed, the antenna would be completely incapacitated.

From this, it can be seen that if the Trisolarans had given humanity the special force field technology of The Waterdrop, there would be no problem with gravitation wave broadcasts becoming ineffective.

...

Crisis Era, Year 237.

The Human Sophon Project had officially begun construction. Similarly, humanity could now manipulate nine out of the eleven dimensions of the micro-world's structure.

For humans to control the dimensions of protons, a "tiny tweezer" needed to extend into the proton to straighten out the curled-up dimensional strings, one by one.

The manipulation required super particle accelerators to accelerate protons, then have other particles collide with them at certain dimensional angles to pull out and straighten the dimensional strings.

This was like a ball of wool, where we used little pellets to accurately hit the end of the yarn out of the wool ball, and then carefully straighten it out. The delicate nature of the process went without saying.

In the space of Titan, a huge ring-shaped accelerator had also been constructed over these four years.

Around the ring were several cubes, which were the super fusion power stations providing energy for the accelerator.

Upon Ding Yi's order, the accelerator commenced operation. Apart from the cooling fins around the accelerator that gradually emitted a dark red light, almost like wings, it seemed as if nothing had happened.

But inside, the accelerated protons had undergone countless probing collisions, yet they still had not pulled out the dimensional string we needed.

Ultimately, the experiment had to be declared a failure.

The Trisolarans had at least managed to unfold a proton into one dimension their first time, but humanity had not even managed to unfold a proton on its first attempt.

In terms of precision of instruments and computation capabilities, there was a clear gap between humanity and the Trisolaran civilization. The Trisolarans were exceedingly particular about every detail, not allowing any oversight; in contrast, the slight errors allowed by humanity during the experiments were unacceptable under the stringent standards of the Trisolarans.

Next, humanity conducted experiments almost every two days, but they undoubtedly all failed either due to precision issues or because they had pulled on the wrong dimensional strings.

It wasn't until the 19th proton unfolding experiment that the team finally managed to perturb the seven dimensional strings curled up inside the proton, thereby unfolding the proton into a four-dimensional form. Its projection in three-dimensional space was only a few centimeters in size.

Although the results of this experiment did not fully meet expectations, it greatly boosted the morale of the team, instilling an unprecedented level of confidence in everyone. This progress was undoubtedly a significant step towards success, and humanity was also able to grasp the laws of unfolding from micro to macro in lower dimensions through previous failures.

Humanity only achieved a two-dimensional unfolding of the proton on the 53rd experiment, compared to the Trisolarans who only needed three attempts—humanity took 50 more.

The two-dimensional unfolded proton used the gravity of Ganymede as scaffolding to envelope the entire moon, of course, this was a lengthy process.

Fortunately, during proton unfolding, humanity did not encounter events similar to the "Magic Eye" civilization, and to cope with a potential "Magic Eye," preparations were made. In fact, humanity was not concerned about the "Magic Eye," for humans' attitude towards it was like that of higher dimensions overwhelming lower ones.

Indeed, if most protons contained intelligent civilizations, then the universe would have far too many intelligent beings.

Equally fortunate was that there was no incident where the proton was reduced to zero dimensions, i.e., a black hole, and for this, humanity had also made many preparations.

After enveloping Ganymede, humanity dispatched tens of thousands of Integrated Circuit Etching Spaceships to etch circuits onto the planar proton surface.

The principle of the proton planar circuit was completely different from that of conventional integrated circuits because its substrate is not made of atoms; it itself is a proton. The P-N junction of a proton planar circuit is formed by twisting parts of the strong interaction force within the proton's surface. The conductive lines are gluon channels that conduct the strong interaction force.

The internal structure of the proton is very complex, not merely consisting of three quarks, as we understood. Naturally, the two-dimensional unfolded proton is even more complex, which is what made the twisting of P-N junctions possible.

To etch circuits onto the surface of the proton, one must have certain means to utilize the strong interaction force. Humanity's mastery of The Waterdrop's fifth kind of force field generation technology was exactly the prerequisite technology required to etch the two-dimensional proton surface. All those tens of thousands of Integrated Circuit Etching Spaceships utilized the strong interaction force field technology to connect the P-N junctions and gluon channels.

Had humanity not captured The Waterdrop during the Doomsday Battle, even with a breakthrough in microscopic theoretical technology in four-dimensional space, it would not have been possible for humanity to produce a Sophon so soon.

After two months of continuous collaborative work by tens of thousands of spaceships, the proton circuit etching project was completed. This was followed by a month of software adjustments. At this point, humanity finally reached the important moment of the Sophon's inaugural trial run.

The speed of completion was much faster than that of the Trisolarans, first because humanity deployed more etching spaceships—humanity simply had more resources, and the construction time for the next Sophon would be even less.

Second, humanities' Sophon did not need to undergo the interference of particle collision experiments, and its functionality could be much less than that of the Trisolarans' Sophons. Since the Trisolarans' Sophons might explore this area at any time, the quicker the Sophon was completed, the better.

Third, the proton circuit etching by humans was also rougher. The circuit lines of the Trisolaran Sophons were as thin as hair strands, while those of the human Sophons were as thick as typical wires.

The only difference was that the human Sophons had many additional features for permission control.

In the control center for the Sophon in space, the completion of the system's self-check program finally appeared on the enormous screen. Following that, the system began loading, and five minutes later, a line of large characters suddenly appeared on the originally blank blue screen:

["Human Micro-Intelligence 5.20" has been loaded and completed. Human Sophon No.1 is awaiting instructions!]

At this moment, many scientists had tears glinting in their eyes, overcome with emotion. Many involuntarily lowered their heads as if to pour out the hardships and waiting of more than two centuries onto the floor.

With voices filled with endless emotion and deep pride, they said, "We've done it, humanity finally has its own Sophon!"

Ding Yi was also immensely excited at this moment. He entered instructions through the control terminal in front of him:[Human Sophon No.1, is the space dimension control function normal?]

The Sophon immediately replied:[Normal, Human Sophon No.1 is ready to initiate the space dimension control function at any time.]

Ding Yi issued another command:[Human Sophon No.1, reduce dimensionality to four dimensions.]

After the command was issued, the two-dimensional proton membrane enveloping Ganymede rapidly contracted, as if a giant hand in the universe pulled back a veil from this world. The proton shrank from two dimensions to four, forming a small sphere a few centimeters in size.

The Human Sophon Project had also taken its first step, but humanity still needed to complete Sophon Nos. 2, 3, and 4. Only by doing so could they form a Sophon array capable of instantaneous communication.